#421: Janet Jackson, "Velvet Rope" (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeO4Da3J-sM

Neither the album Velvet Rope nor the title song were anything I expected, in 1997, to like. I've mentioned that my songs countdown is going to under-represent black artists; it's nothing to do with malice, and quite a lot to do with the simple fact that at least in the United States, white and black listeners are exposed to different musical traditions (on average, obviously with many exceptions, but my musical listening growing up at home was *entirely* white). One broad difference, as I perceive it, is a traditional white-music emphasis on composed melodies, versus a traditional black-music emphasis on dance rhythms, bass, and melismatic vocal improvisation. I had no use for Janet's Rhythm Nation 1814, nor do I now, and I wouldn't have expected to from the title (although the "1814" part sounds intriguingly specific; I've never figured out its referent, sadly, and the socially conscious lyrics throughout seem vague and limp to me).

Velvet Rope on the other hand puts more emphasis on tunes. Every song has a good beat,
but many of them are soft, quiet ones, allowing Janet to sing breathily, in urgent whispers that don't strain to be heard over a room full of dancers. (That, after all, is what the engineers and mixers set volume levels to accomplish.) The lyrics are personal -- it's not that I prefer songs about loneliness and kinky sex to protest songs, but I prefer words the singer seems invested in, as Janet does here, over cliched slogans she seems to have grabbed from the ether, however sincerely she did so.

"Velvet Rope" itself hits a lyrical sweet spot, though: seductive and intimate, while subtly doubling as social commentary against itself. "We have a special need to feel that we belong/ Come with me inside my velvet rope" is of course the focus: a star since the age of 7, Janet sings what seems like a very personal invitation to each of us millions of listeners, that you or I should separate ourselves from those other millions, kept away by rope and security guards, to keep her company while she bares her soul. If velvet ropes also strike you as useful toys while she bares her skin, cool, that evidently works for the singer too.

But there's a darkness to the lush music, and the lyrics don't completely shy away: "Put others down to fill us up". "We're one of the special", she asserts (the grammar implies a union of bodies too), which means we're not one of all those unspecials. "Outside leave judgment, outside leave hate" tries to revert to idealism, but it's judgment that tells us who to leave outside in the first place. There is, technically, some possibility that she was *not* singing "Velvet Rope" to me personally; no wonder the proceedings are in minor key when I listen.

Vanessa-Mae guests on violin, moving from atmosphere to a spectacular solo. Classical music is something my dad played for me when I visited, normally 20th-century stuff with some dissonance, just like she plays here. A gorgeous, unsettling song.